Entries associated with the tag "Walter Netsch":

You can't read Chicago Architect, the glossy magazine published by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, online--it's free to members and available by subscription to the rest of us for $35 a year. But the AIA has posted an interview with Chicago architect Walter Netsch, who died in June. It's not the world's most fascinating Q & A--the Art Institute has a much more in-depth one here (PDF), conducted in 1995--but it's notable because it was conducted just last year.

Among other things, he discusses climate change (briefly), his fight to keep his license, and which among his many projects (including the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U of I Chicago Circle campus, and "brutalist" libraries at the U. of C. and Northwestern) he considered failures (bold emphasis mine):

Z: You've had many successful projects. Do you consider any of your projects to be failures?

W: I did some dorms at the Air Force Academy long after we did the campus itself. They really were awful. They were for visiting officers who were out there to have a good time. Well, I didn't design them a good-time joint—the dorms I designed were rather perfunctory.

It was a case of the wrong architect and the wrong client. That project was a flop. I wasn't proud of it at all. But I wasn't going to design a nightclub or a whorehouse. That's what it became. They had a particular ethic of their own. It's not mine. And I didn't understand that. I misunderstood the client, in other words, and designed a lousy building for them.

The Inland Steel building. That could have been quite wonderful. I designed a double glass curtain wall system, much like what you see some architects doing today. It was very energy efficient. But in the middle of that, I was assigned to lead the Air Force Academy campus project. Twenty thousand raw acres to plan, design and build. I wasn't going to complain. But Bruce Graham finished the Inland Steel Building. It could have been a better building.

Walter Netsch, the longtime Skidmore, Owings & Merrill giant and former Park District commissioner, died yesterday at 88. Blair Kamin has an obit; Lee Bey recommends his oral history from the AIC's great collection. As far as I know these things I think the consensus is that his greatest work is the Air Force Academy chapel, which is indeed stunning (his early Inland Steel building is also well-regarded).

But I will earnestly and honestly defend his often-maligned Regenstein Library, where I passed many hours (the chairs next to the windows on the north end of the first floor are a great place to sleep). There's a tendency for libraries to be delicate, ornate, welcoming, etc. The Reg is none of those things; it's a massive, geometrically complex bunker that looks even bigger than it is and like it doesn't like you.

With one caveat--it's welcoming in the sense that it looks like a place you could ride out nuclear apocalypse. Not coincidentally, the threat of nuclear apocalypse really started with Fermi's first chain reaction, which took place under the stadium that the library replaced. I think I remember reading that Netsch was influenced by the nuclear reactor Fermi built; looking at it, it'd make sense.

You might not guess it from looking at the Reg, which does look cold and intimidating, but it gets used. Criticized, yes, but U. of C. students burn away the hours there, and my wholly unsupported-by-evidence theory is that it's secretly beloved by students because it's hard, dark, and complex, which compliments the U. of C. student self-image.

Not to mention the fact that its Fermi-inspired design and historical lineage gives it gravitas. If the cathedral-like Harper Library suggests the abstract transcendence of study, the Reg is a reminder of the tangible power of knowledge and higher education, for good and ill. On the campus that brought you Paul Wolfowitz, David Brooks, Ahmed Chalabi, and John Aschcroft, not to mention nuclear war, the Chicago Boys, and some of America's earliest and most, um, "successful" urban renewal, it's a ballsy and not-trivial architectural statement.